Gold Coast held their much anticipated Startup Weekend last week and the tourist hot-spot crowned goStandby.com.au as the winner of the weekend, an application that allows users to grab a last minute deal and save big bucks!

As Division 9 Councillor Glenn Councillor Tozer announced the winners he said:”An application like this will be a great stimulus to fill last-minute seats for so many tourist activities on the Gold Coast such as Hot Air Balloon Rides, Cultural Events and water sports, giving further support to local business owners who struggle to run their events at full capacity”

Second place was awarded to ReHydrate, a bracelet designed to gauge your hydration levels when outside, for individuals such as Queensland Volunteer Firefighters. Other standout’s included a weather app that communicated to Surfers about the waves that were worth getting out of bed for in the mornings [very suitable for the area] and an app that allowed you to communicate with your home alone pets.

Greg Burnett, from SiliconLakes.com.au, one of the Gold Coast StartUp Weekend organisers, described the event as “experienced based learning, where people who know nothing about technology or starting up businesses, can have an action packed-weekend taking a brilliant ideas and converting them to viable businesses.”

Burnett said the Gold Coast stands on par, if not ahead of the level of entrepreneurs and technology advancements seen in Brisbane. On a recent trip to Silicon Valley in California, he experienced a strong push towards social entreprenurialism and belives there are hundreds of people on the Gold Coast who are struggling to launch their own businesses but lack the mentoring and guidance that these StartUp Weekends provide.

Following the success of last weekend, preparations are underway for the next event to be held in November this year to coincide with Global Entrepreneur Week.